Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tsering Yangzom Lama, Tolu Oloruntoba among 2023 BC and Yukon Book Prizes finalists

Authors Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tsering Yangzom Lama and Tolu Oloruntoba have been shortlisted for the 39th annual BC and Yukon Book Prizes.

The prizes celebrate books by writers in the province and territory on Canada's west coast across eight different categories, from fiction to children's literature. 

Belcourt's debut novel A Minor Chorus has made the shortlist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. A Minor Chorus follows an unnamed narrator who abandons his thesis and goes back to his hometown, where he has a series of intimate encounters bringing the modern queer and Indigenous experience into focus.

• Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut novel A Minor Chorus uplifts the modern queer Indigenous experience

Belcourt is a writer and academic from Driftpile Cree Nation. He won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize for his first poetry collection, This Wound is a World. His second book, NDN Coping Mechanisms, uses poetry, prose and textual art to explore how Indigenous and queer communities are left out of mainstream media. It was on the Canada Reads 2020 longlist and was shortlisted for the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards. He is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama was twice shortlisted. It is up for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes.

We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies tells the story of one family's struggle in the aftermath of China's invasion of Tibet in the 1950s. Readers follow sisters Lhamo and Tenkyi on a multi-decade journey through exile, from a harrowing trek across the Himalayas to a refugee camp on the border of Nepal.

Lama is a Tibetan Canadian author based in Vancouver, who was named a writer to watch by CBC Books in 2022. She holds a BA in creative writing and international relations from the University of British Columbia and a MFA from Columbia University.

Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Globe and Mail, The Malahat Review and Grain. We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is Lama's debut novel. It was  on the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist.

• Tsering Yangzom Lama's We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies examines the cost of exile — read an excerpt now

Each One a Furnace by Tolu Oloruntoba has made the shortlist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. The poetry collection uses the imagery of migratory birds to paint vivid snapshots of isolation, immigration and the feeling of being othered. 

• Tolu Oloruntoba on his new poetry collection and what it means to migrate

Oloruntoba is a writer from Nigeria who now lives in Surrey, B.C. He practiced medicine for six years and has nurtured a love for writing poetry since he was 16. His debut poetry collection, The Junta of Happenstance, won the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and was the Canadian winner for the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize. Oloruntoba is a judge for the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize.

• Joseph A. Dandurand, Catherine Graham and Tolu Oloruntoba to judge 2023 CBC Poetry Prize

The winners in all eight categories will be announced on Sept. 24, 2023 at the BC and Yukon Book Prizes gala.

Past winners include authors Ruth Ozeki, Jordan Abel, Suzanne Simard, Michael Prior, Ivan Coyote, Steven Price and Chantal Gibson. 

• Steven Price tells the story of a Sicilian prince and his literary masterpiece in Lampedusa

Find all the shortlists for the 2023 BC and Yukon Book Prizes below.

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize:

• The Language of Dreams by Marion Ehrenberg
• A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
• We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama
• Uncertain Kin by Janice Lynn Mather
• The Foghorn Echoes by Danny Ramadan

Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize:

• The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants by Karen Bakker
• Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods by Lyndsie Bourgon
• What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make by Michael J. Hathaway
• Invisible Boy by Harrison Mooney
• True Reconciliation by Jody Wilson-Raybould

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize:

• A is for Acholi by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek
• The Program by Megan Fennya Jones
• HARROWINGS by Cecily Nicholson
• Each One a Furnace by Tolu Oloruntoba
• Test Piece by Sheryda Warrener

Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes:

• A is for Acholi by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek
• What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make by Michael J. Hathaway
• We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama
• Invisible Boy by Harrison Mooney
• Refugee Lifeworlds: The Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia by Y-Dang Troeung

Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize:

• Arthur Who Wrote Sherlock by Linda Bailey, illustrated by Isabelle Follath 
• PAWS: Mindy Makes Some Space by Nathan Fairbairn, illustrated by Michele 
• The Flamingo by Guojing
• Still This Love Goes On by Buffy Sainte-Marie, illustrated by Julie Flett
• That's My Sweater! by Jessika Von Innerebner 

Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize

• Her Courage Rises: 50 Trailblazing Women of British Columbia and the Yukon by Haley Healey, illustrated by Kimiko Fraser
• In the Serpent's Wake by Rachel Hartman
• Me Three by Susan Juby
• The Science of Boys by Emily Seo, illustrated by Gracey Zhang
• Weird Rules to Follow by Kim Spencer

Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award:

• I Hope / nipakosêyimon by Monique Gray Smith, translated by Dolores Greyeyes Sand, illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard
• Namwayut: We Are All One: A Pathway to Reconciliation by Chief Robert Joseph
• Return to Solitude: More Desolation Sound Adventures with the Cougar Lady, Russell the Hermit, the Spaghetti Bandit and Others by Grant Lawrence
• Cold Case BC: The Stories behind the Province's Most Intriguing Murder and Missing Persons Cases by Eve Lazarus
• Echoes of the Supernatural: The Graphic Art of Robert Davidson by Gary Wyatt with Robert Davidson

Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize:

• Dempsey Bob: In His Own Voice by Dempsey Bob, edited by Sarah Milroy 
• The Acid Room: The Psychedelic Trials and Tribulations of Hollywood Hospital by Erika Dyck and Jesse Donaldson
• Knowledge Within: Treasures of the Northwest Coast edited by Caitlin Gordon-Walker, curated by Pam Brown, Jisgang Nika Collison, Anthony Alan Shelton and Jodi Simkin
• Kwändür by Cole Pauls
• Ben the Sea Lion by Roy Henry Vickers